Sigismund Goetze’s painting Britannia Pacificatrix, showing Britannia victorious after the First World War.
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
From 1806, Britain’s first Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the rakish Charles James Fox, along with twenty of his successors, used a Westminster office situated in a ramshackle house in Downing Street. In 1852 one of its ceilings collapsed a fraction too close to the incumbent, Lord Malmesbury.
Sigismund Goetze’s painting Britannia Pacificatrix, showing Britannia victorious after the First World War.
The Muses’ Staircase, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The two portraits are of the Emperor Napoleon III of France and his wife, Empress Eugenie by Armand Constant Mélincourt-Lefebrve. The octagonal glass lantern over the staircase was sculpted by Farmer and Brindley.
The incident came at a time of a growing British influence on the world stage, with the mid-Victorian period representing the peak of power. For a replacement building, a purpose-built bureau, rivalling the Quai d’Orsay in Paris or St Petersburg’s General Staff Building, was planned. George Gilbert Scott, the project’s architect, preferred the gothic style, but Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, favoured Palladian. The Italianate style prevailed. Construction on what would eventually be known as the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office commenced in 1861, with completion in 1868. Matthew Digby Wyatt, Scott’s architectural partner, designed the India Office Council Chamber and the Durbar Court. English sculptors Henry Hugh Armstead and John Birnie Philip created relief portraits for the building’s external stone façade, with subjects including Alfred the Great, Drake, Cook and Wilberforce, along with a phalanx of allegorical statues representing Law, Art, Commerce and the like. The building housed four different government departments: the Foreign Office and India Office initially, with the Colonial and Home Offices moving in by 1875. Standing on King Charles Street, its dignified exterior hardly rates a second glance by the thousands of tourists who pass through Whitehall, and the building is not highly ranked by enthusiasts of architecture. The interior is a different matter.
The Grand Staircase, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The India Office Council Chamber’s importance in nineteenth-century foreign relations is emphasized by its height and size, and its elaborate use of gilt in a room used regularly by the Secretary of State for India and his council from 1868 to 1947. Dominating the room is the 1730 marble chimneypiece, the work of Flemish sculptor Jan Michael Rysbrack. Britannia is seen receiving gifts from the East, with Africa represented by a figure leading a lion, and Asia symbolized by a figure leading a camel. On either side of the fireplace, portraits of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings are testimony to erstwhile colonial glory, while furniture includes nineteenth-century mahogany chairs, and a newspaper stand brought from East India House. With the 1947 demise of the India Office its building was taken over by the Foreign Office, with the chamber hosting the 1948 London 6-Power Conference for discussions on Germany’s future role by democratic and federal governance in the US, British and French sectors. Later, preliminary talks for early meetings of NATO officials were held in the chamber that in the twenty-first century is still used for daily meetings and conferences on international affairs.
At the nucleus of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is the Durbar Court (a Persian word meaning Shah’s Noble Court), based on designs for the courtyard of Rome’s Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria. The London cortile’s mosaic of tiles was influenced by Italian and Indian artistry, and the ascending levels of columns on all four sides are supported by ground floor Doric and first floor Ionic columns of polished, red Peterhead granite, and top floor Corinthian columns of grey Aberdeen granite. The courtyard’s pavement is Greek, Sicilian and Belgian marble. An open courtyard had been envisaged, but the addition of the glazed cast-iron roof, inspired by Wyatt’s work at Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition and Paddington Station, allows flecked reflections of sunlight to seep into exotic surroundings. First used in 1867 for a reception honouring Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz, the name Durbar Court only dates from 1902, when some of Edward VII’s coronation celebrations were held there.
The Durbar Court.
When designing what became known as the Locarno Suite, Scott envisioned an aura of grandeur by using space to create a ‘Drawing-Room for the Nation’ to host great occasions. The suite comprised three rooms – the ‘Cabinet Room’ (now known as the Grand Reception Room), the Conference Room and the smaller Square Dining Room – and guests entered via the left side of the grand staircase. The Dining Room, called the Cabinet or the Small Dining Room, was invariably used by the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury as his office, and his portrait hangs there. In 1925, the suite witnessed the signing of the Locarno Treaties to improve European diplomatic relations and, following some redecoration that same year, became known as the Locarno Suite. In 1935, the suite was chosen for the opening session of the International Naval Conference, and also hosted a dinner party for the state visit of President Lebrun of France in 1939. During redecoration in the 1990s, removal of plasterboard and grubby red silk hangings disclosed fading olive and gold decor with red and gold borders, enabling restorers to match the original colours to return the room to its former magnificence.
